We make camp that night in the place where Leona, Anton and I first met Senator Cos, and I smoked a cigarillo with the Wolf’s sergeant.
Sergeant Toro is still around.
Who do you think just gave me another bottle of cane spirit?
Mary, the girl from the inn, takes one look at the convoy that rides into her village and decides she doesn’t know me.
‘Wise decision,’ the SIG says.
‘How do you-?’
‘Fight, flight or fuck.’ The gun sighs. ‘You’re pretty basic. I could run you through the body chemistry, biological triggers and neural responses. But I’d only end up explaining every other word.’
‘Biological what?’
‘Your brain went, pretty. Your dick went, again . . .’ The SIG stops, thinks. ‘Actually, it was the other way round.’ My gun hasn’t forgiven me using its holster to store alcohol, but can’t resist being snotty.
If Mary has any sense, and she has, she’ll keep her head down and her opinions to herself and wait for us to roll out of here tomorrow. Then she can come up with a better plan for escaping. One that doesn’t involve me.
‘You’ll be all right, Sven?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good.’ Colonel Vijay tries to smile. ‘Earlier, when you asked . . . I appreciate your concern, Sven. And I know we’ll all be happier when this is over.’
That’s his own death he’s talking about.
‘Sir . . .’
He turns back, finds his smile. ‘Have a good evening, Sven. I’ll see you in the morning.’
As is the way in the wastes, the temperature plummets the moment the sun sinks behind the horizon. Iona asks why it’s so cold here when night in Farlight is hot and humid.
Taking this as an excuse to wrap his arm round her, my sergeant invents a theory to do with the city’s volcano trapping clouds. He does this between taking his turn at the cane spirit and cupping the underside of Iona’s breast when he thinks we won’t notice.
His sister opens her mouth to object.
And I interrupt her to talk the Aux through how things stand between the Wolf and Colonel Vijay. Although they hear about General Luc’s visit to Wildeside for the first time, it’s only when I mention Aptitude that Shil and Rachel start looking at each other.
The colonel dines with General Luc at the inn, while we sit round our fire, draining the bottle and watching sparks fly into a moonlit sky. The sparks should remind us of what happened last night, all those burning houses and looted shops, but they don’t. They simply look like sparks disappearing into the darkness.
Neen’s twenty, Iona’s eighteen.
They’ve been together less than six months.
Their lust is understandable, although Shil doesn’t look at it that way. She’s ten years older than her brother. Old enough to remember the dirt poor, Uplifted planet on which she was born, and the punishments the Enlightened inflicted on girls who let men get too close.
‘Neen,’ I say. ‘Check the perimeter.’
Scrambling to his feet, he disappears into the night.
I don’t mind members of the Aux fucking. Battle can take you like that. Actually, anything can take you like that. Battle, loneliness, alcohol, just the sheer bloody number of miles from home. But I’m not having it cause problems.
‘All quiet, sir.’
Neen has the sense to sit opposite Iona this time.
It should be all quiet. At least, quiet in the sense no one’s likely to attack. We’ve got five hundred Wolf Brigade camped around us. I’m more concerned with General Luc’s people listening in.
‘So the Wolf says he’s going to kill Colonel Vijay?’
Iona sounds puzzled.
‘He’ll do it too,’ Rachel says.
‘Then why doesn’t the colonel run away?’
A chorus tells Iona that the Death’s Head don’t run.
‘Escape then,’ she says. ‘Withdraw.’
You can tell she doesn’t know the difference.
‘Because,’ I say, ‘he’s given his surrender to General Luc. He would have to take it back. And then the general would know he was planning to escape.’
‘That’s stupid,’ Iona says.
Neen’s torn between agreeing and telling her why it isn’t true. He sees me watching and bites his lip. He still looks like a farm boy half a spiral from home. Pushing hair out of his eyes, he says, ‘The colonel’s high clan. They have their own rules.’
‘And those rules bind us?’
It’s the first sensible question I’ve heard Iona ask, ever.
The fact she’s Neen’s lover isn’t enough to earn her a place here. She travels with us because her safety was the price put on me by a tribal woman who nursed me back to life after I’d taken more damage than my body could handle.
Iona will never make a soldier.
She’s built for bars and bedrooms, children and gardens full of flowers. Some women are. So are some men. Iona never makes any secret of what she wants from life. What she hopes Neen will eventually give her.
All the same . . .
‘They bind the colonel,’ I say.
Something in my tone makes Shil glance my way.
Without a word, she clambers up and removes the cane-spirit bottle that has found its way into my hands again. What’s more, I let her. A few minutes later she reappears with a mug of coffee. It’s hot, bitter and black.